


The Kirkish Action

by SpaceCat



Series: The Ranger Files [2]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCat/pseuds/SpaceCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rangers Winters and Ivanova help deliver a package to Babylon 5. Set during "Messages from Earth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

2260.03.21.0713 ... New Ranger base in the Delphi system on the border between Earth Alliance and Minbari Federation space

"Susan?" I stepped into the fighter bay, senses alert. "Susan, are you in here?" Usually I didn't have any trouble finding my wife and partner, but she seemed off grid today, much to my annoyance. Additional annoyance, I should say, since I woke up alone this morning. That's the third time this week. I stepped up to the Ranger fighter that she's been modifying to carry two people. "Susan?" There was still no response. Opening the hatch, I climbed up into the cockpit and looked around. There was a faint light from the engineering access panel at the rear and I stopped in to find Susan asleep in the cramped space on the floor, her head pillowed on a tool bag.

My annoyance melted away at the exhaustion on her face, although I didn't plan on letting her know that just yet. I gently shook her shoulder. "Susan, why are you sleeping in here?"

She rolled over on her back and sleepily opened her eyes. "Hmm? What time is it?" She yawned widely.

"It's a quarter past breakfast, that's what time it is." I was sure she could sense how I felt, but I put just a little edge in my voice for emphasis. "Why on Earth didn't you come back to bed last night?"

Susan rolled to her feet gracefully. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "I wanted to get this last engine tweak finished." She gave me a peck on the cheek. "I really didn't mean to fall sleep here."

"You aren't going to get this damn thing done any faster if you burn yourself out working on it," I replied with some asperity. Then in a gentler tone, "And with you spending so much time training the new officers, I feel like I haven't seen you hardly at all for weeks except on the nights you come in late and collapse in bed too exhausted to move."

"I know," she paused and looked down. "It's just that we have so much to do yet." She rubbed her face with both hands, and then looked back at me somberly. "I have this heavy feeling... Somewhere out there the Shadows are moving and we aren't ready." We looked at one another silently for a minute then she seemed to shake the mood off and touched my mind with contrition and gratitude for my concern.

I couldn't stay even pretend-mad at her. I pulled her into a hug and wrapped her mind up in my own, taking some of the burden from her shoulders. She allowed it for only a moment, then with a spark she joined with me in our private version of Unity that encased us in the sparkling mirror-like bubble of our own little universe. The Minbari of course have a word for it, they call it Na'Shag, One Soul. After a several long minutes of wordless sharing, I reluctantly disengaged. "Come on; let me get you some breakfast."

"You don't have to do that," Susan objected when we got back to our quarters.

"Oh, but I want to," I gave her a cheeky grin and waggled my eyebrows. "Or maybe I just want to keep an eye on you." I traced a light finger down the side of her face.

"I've never given you cause for concern." Susan slipped her hands around my waist and nuzzled my neck.

"No, but you don't see all the people mooning over you." I let my own hands start to wander.

She growled. "That's because I'm too busy kicking the butts of everyone watching you." She nipped me lightly and I squirmed in her grasp.

"You had an awfully long night," I said innocently. "Are you sure you don't want a nap?"

"I've decided what I want breakfast." I gasped as she swept me off my feet and into her arms, and headed towards the bedroom. "And it doesn't include napping." I wrapped my arms around her neck and let her carry me.

With all the timing you would expect from a hostile universe, the comm unit chimed.

Susan set me down gently and sighed. "Ivanova. Go."

"Sech Turval wants to see you," spoke the voice of one of the younger Rangers. "Something has come up."

<> 

Susan laced our fingers together as we walked through the base corridors. I kept happily silent the whole way. She had never been one for public displays, but she had started to relax since our Minbari-style marriage ceremony and was doing this sort of thing more frequently.

A young man was with Sech Turval when we arrived. He was barely out of his teens, but with a firm jaw and a grim mouth. He bowed to us in the Minbari way, which we returned.

Turval smiled at us benignly. He greeted us in Minbari fashion as Wintova, joining our names as our souls were joined. "Allow me to introduce you to Anla'Shok Moss. Tell them your story, Shok-zha Moss."

The young man swallowed hard, but his voice was steady. "My father was a mining engineer. He went to work for the Cole Mining Company on Arisia III about a year ago, taking my mother with him. I was at school on Earth at the time. A little over six months ago, the Shadows destroyed the Arisia colony, killing everyone. So I joined the Rangers." He took a deep breath. "My father's sister works in the mine on Ganymede. She just sent me a coded message. They've discovered a Shadow vessel buried there."

Susan and I looked at one another. I had a sick feeling in my stomach and Susan touched my mind comfortingly.

Turval put a kindly hand on Moss' shoulder. "Anla'Shok Moss of course wanted to immediately go and investigate, but he must finish his training, and I felt that perhaps your talents would be best suited for the task."

Susan and I bowed in unison. "Yes, Sech Turval," I said.

<> 

"Well that doesn't sound too difficult," Susan said on our way back to quarters. "Head to Ganymede, talk to the lead scientist."

"You're forgetting the part about the Shadow vessel," I said dryly. "I knew we'd encounter one sooner or later, but I would have preferred later."

"Well you could stay behind," Susan said in a carefully neutral voice, shrugging her shoulders casually. "This is an easy one."

I could feel the hope behind the thought. It wasn't that she didn't want my company; she just wanted to spare me the upset. I kissed her cheek. "I said I'd never leave your side, and I meant it."

<> 

Getting to Ganymede was easy enough. For the right number of Earth credits, the Captain of the ore hauler wouldn't see or hear anything.

Once it landed, we stayed hidden until the crew debarked, then slipped out. We Joined hands and minds and looked around carefully. For having such an aura of mingled anticipation and dread, the spaceport was surprisingly empty. Its pale gray walls matched the drab landscape of dust covered ice outside.

It did not take long to find Moss' office at the back of the building. The door opened quickly after we knocked and we were pulled brusquely inside. The office belonged to a middle aged woman of medium height with gray hair that looked windblown and bright almond shaped eyes. She was wearing clean if worn coveralls and light boots. Once we were in she glanced around the port quickly before jerking her head back in and shutting the door.

"I didn't think you guys would get here this soon," she said looking us up and down approvingly. "This place has been weirder than a Thakallian cat with three tails and two heads."

"Winters and Ivanova," I said, indicating myself then Susan. "What's been going on?"

She nodded at us each in lieu of handshake. "Who the hell knows? They found a morbidium lode and bored for deeper core samples. The drill hit something about 100 meters down and stopped. At first it appeared to be just an electrical short, but when they went over to examine the drill, the operator and everyone else touching it were dead." She looked sad for a moment then shook it off.

"They shut the whole place down to investigate until some mining company manager showed up and did a lot of yelling about production and made them power up again, everything except the morbidium drill." She started pacing restlessly. "The very next day an IPX bigwig showed up with a Psi Cop in tow, sent the manager away and shut everything down again."

She paused and I prompted her to continue. "What happened then?"

"They brought in a couple of big excavators and raised that thing to the surface." She stopped pacing for a moment. "That's when the creepy nightmares started." She looked down at the floor. "Everyone within five kilometers has been getting them. An unearthly scream and images of a ship like they've been showing on ISN; that's when I knew it was one of those things my nephew has been telling me about."

Susan usually lets me do most of the talking, so I was surprised when she asked, "What have they done about all the miners?"

"They moved all the men out to the furthest barracks. After a day or two, they allowed work on the outermost shafts only, but everyone is still restless and production is a fraction of normal." She went over to a dust covered window and brushed a clear spot in the middle. "See that dome to the left?" she asked, pointing. Susan went and peered out.

"They brought four of their top xenoarcheologists with a bunch of equipment and built a research facility over the thing. They've been analyzing it non-stop night and day since they finished."

Susan seemed about to say something else when Moss dropped heavily into the chair behind her desk. "And then there's yesterday's commotion."

"What happened?"

Moss looked right at me. "Dr. Mary Kirkish, their lead scientist, disappeared."

 _Convenient. Just the person we wanted to talk to_ , Susan said silently. I agreed. "Any idea where she's gone?" I asked.

"Either she's hiding here well enough that the Psi Cop can't find her, or she's dead, or she's left Ganymede. The only ships leaving over the last week have all been going to Mars, so that's where they're looking." Moss opened a back door to her office carefully and glanced around before exiting and waving us after her. "Let's find someplace to stash you guys for the time being."

"If we needed to get to Mars, what would be the fastest way?" Susan asked quietly. Our assignment was to speak to her after all, so if she had left, we would have to follow her.

Moss thought for a minute as she led us down a long bare hallway. "There's a supply ship due in about twelve hours; that would be your best bet."

Twelve hours was enough time. Susan and I exchanged a glance. _We need to get over to the dome and check things out,_ she said in my mind. Reluctantly, I agreed.

<> 

While Ganymede's thin atmosphere was almost entirely oxygen, it wasn't exactly breathable by human standards. But we had Minbari style breather masks in our kits, and Moss left us in a small locker room that the pilots used to clean up between runs. After a little exploring we found two of the protective suits that the miner's used out on the surface.

We set out, picking our way cautiously through the rugged terrain. We could see the rim of an impact crater a few kilometers away, its dark jagged peaks silhouetted against the full bright face of Jupiter. It was beautiful in its own stark way and I paused to appreciate it for a second before Susan urged me on. We kept to shadows as much as possible, the brightness of Jupiter providing light almost equal to normal daylight.

"Susan, what's morbidium?" I asked and we picked our way across the jagged icy surface.

"It's used to make the firing coils in PPG's," she replied. "Even though Ganymede's crust is almost entirely ice, the meteor impacts in this region have churned up large rock formations from the rocky mantle below. They mine them for all kinds of minerals, not just morbidium." She jumped down off a small boulder of ice and turned to give me a hand. "But morbidium is one of the most lucrative ones, so they'll go to considerable lengths to find it."

Which probably explained why someone would set up a mine in this inhospitable place, I thought. I shivered in the bitter cold that seemed to seep through my protective suit.

It was only about a kilometer to the research dome, but it seemed to take hours to get there. The dome would seem to get closer but we would go around wind-sculpted ice formations and it would seem to be further away again. Finally we went up a rise of choppy ice that was like trying to walk up a sand dune, sliding back partway with each step. Susan and I hung onto one another for balance the whole way and I was panting with exertion when we reached the top.

We paused to catch our breath and looked down on the dome complex immediately below us. The wireframe and clearsteel dome sparkled with faint frosty crystals in the light of Jupiter. A sprawling cluster of pre-fab buildings surrounded and cradled the dome in its center. Dimly through the clear dome we could see a large strangely-shaped dark object.

After a few minutes, we picked out way carefully down to the complex. Susan poked her head cautiously into the first building we encountered. "Water reclamation, looks like," she said. "They must melt down the ice and purify it."

It was deserted. We passed it by and made our way to the next building. Going around the corner we saw a curved oblong structure that hugged the arc of the dome, apparently attached. Susan gestured towards it. "That'll get us in pretty close."

We slipped to the closest entrance on one end of the long building and found it unlocked. The door had a light seal lock, nothing like the airlocks you'd have in space, but just enough against Ganymede's atmosphere. We slipped inside and Susan lifted her breather and took a cautious breath before signaling me that it was safe to breathe. I removed my mask and sniffed the air. It was still and sterile, and didn't have all the normal smells you'd expect from human habitation in a closed environment.

This building also appeared to be deserted. We found a conference or projection room that looked unused. There was a cafeteria and break room full of gleaming coffee pots and never-used serving trays. We wandered through office after office all with brand new desks stocked with the usual office supplies, but not one personal picture or memento was to be found.

I was feeling vaguely uneasy about the place when Susan said, "This place is giving me the creeps." It was uncanny how she could echo my thoughts, even when our minds weren't touching.

After the offices, we came to a high ceilinged foyer and the main entrance. It was stark and utilitarian, but it could have been full of brightly colored and raucous Soomian swugs and we wouldn't have noticed. Because the wall to our right was the clearsteel wall of the dome and afforded us a perfect view of... It.

Roughly horseshoe shaped, it had long projections of various lengths coming out of the sides and back. Like a vast spider, if spiders had eighteen legs. The skin was deepest black, but if you looked closely enough there was a pattern on it. It wasn't so much another color, but rather a change in reflectiveness that gave the appearance of cracked glass when the light shifted over it.

While the building we were in was deserted, there were people in the dome. The floor around the ship was strewn with instruments and sensing equipment of every shape and size. The researchers moved around purposefully, not looking at one another and thankfully not at us.

After silently observing for a long while, Susan said, "It sounds kind of like Kosh's ship."

I looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Kosh's ship whispered. We had to keep all the maintenance personnel out of its bay because it talked to them in their sleep and scared them. But I liked listening to it." She nodded towards the black vessel. "The vibrations are slightly different, deeper and darker somehow, but I can 'hear' it the same way."

I had never gotten close enough to Kosh's vessel to experience that, so I opened my mind to see if I could pick anything up. It was there, but I was distracted from examining it by the minds of all the researchers. Every single one of them was reciting the same mind numbing chant. "Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow." It was the chant that telepaths repeat over and over to prevent their thoughts from leaking out to be casually scanned. But none of them were telepaths.

I shared this with Susan. "Isn't there supposed to be a Psi Cop around?" she asked. "Maybe they're afraid of him."

"Maybe," I said doubtfully. There was something here that I just couldn't put my finger on. "But perhaps it has something to do with the dreams Moss was telling us about. If people five kilometers away are getting nightmares from this thing, imagine what it must be like to be this close at all hours."

I held my hand out for Susan to take, and we slipped into Unity. The world shifted and clarified to our sight, the innumerable properties of matter and energy adding colors beyond the visible spectrum to everything within our perceptual range. We had been working to increase that range and extended our senses to their maximum.

 _There's the Psi Cop._ He stood out against the background of other minds like a beacon. We passed over him lightly, searching for any stray thought that might give us any information on what they'd discovered about the ship or what had happened to Dr. Kirkish.

We were about to give up when we touched something alien. No adjective exists to fully encompass the obsidian glacier which we sensed. It was as frigid and empty as the vacuum of space, as lightless as the void beyond the galactic rim, and at our touch... _it awoke_.

It was the Shadow vessel and it cried out at our touch, a piercing scream that lanced through us painfully. Frightening, and yet frightened; awoken before its time. It was so alone, with a childlike fear of that loneliness, and it tried to latch onto anything, any mind. Trapped in perpetual sunless shadow, we were the closest solace it could find. It reached into us and we projected comfort. We rocked with its righteous hurt at its abandonment; we burned with its righteous anger at its betrayal. It quickly became too much for us and we tried to pull back, but discovered we could not.

Pitch, we decided, was a good adjective... light absorbing, sticky and entrapping. For every pull of ours away, long ropy tentacles entwined us further; tendrils of us and tendrils of it bleeding together around the edges like colors on a palate. It tightened and coiled snake-like around us; the more we struggled in our panic the more entangled we became and the stronger we were held. We inhaled its darkness and it filled us, merging us further into the stygian depths of its consciousness.

We were lost for an uncounted time until an intense cry of possessive wrath slashed across the bonds that forged us to the alien consciousness. We were entrapped and helpless against the furious psychic pounding, not even able to cry out. But the Shadow drew in the Psi Cop too, and soon he was fighting it with a violent roar and a thunder of psi energy. We were buffeted painfully from both sides, caught in the crossfire. Eventually even a Psi Cop must tire however and in his weakening struggles, a pulse of our own will that must have come mostly from Susan's warrior heart lanced out. In the sudden wildfire that ignited, we finally burst free of the Shadow, the Psi Cop escaping with us.

Tired he may have been, but he enough energy left for us and gave us no time to recover. He probed again and again, short sharp jabs that kept us off balance until our Unity dissolved and were once again Talia and Susan. "Come on," Susan gasped, "We have to get out of here." She dragged me bodily to the door, helped me put my breather back on, and we plunged out into the thin atmosphere of Ganymede.

Before long I stumbled and fell to the icy ground, so exhausted and numb that I could hardly move. The roaring darkness still filled me and I knew Susan was shouting something at me, but I couldn't hear and couldn't move. My last memory was being hoisted over Susan's shoulder in a fireman's carry, and then everything went blessedly quiet.


	2. Chapter 2

I awoke in a small cold and cramped space, a closet perhaps, at last aware of my surroundings. Susan had taken both our Ranger cloaks and wrapped them around us. I had a pounding headache and was shivering uncontrollably, the warmth of Susan's body unable to counter the chill that still gripped me. I tried to remember where we were and how we got here, but my only memory was of screaming in an endless void and hearing no echo. The horror tried to pull me in again, but I pushed it away and turned my head cautiously to look at Susan.

I found her beauty to be radiant as always, and the sight helped push the darkness further behind me. She was asleep, which assured me that we must be safe for the moment, but I was troubled by the lines of worry and exhaustion that clearly marked her face. Careful not to wake her, I snuggled closer and with the lightest touch on her mind concentrated on her warmth, letting it fill my whole consciousness until I finally drifted into a deep dreamless sleep.

When I awoke again, Susan was kneeling at my feet fussing with our packs. "Hey," I whispered hoarsely.

Susan turned immediately with a smile. "Hey, how are you feeling?" She leaned down and kissed me adding a gentle telepathic stroke.

I opened my mind and let her in completely. _Bruised, but better. Thank you._

_Anything for you. You really had me worried._

I sat up and hugged her tightly, and opened my mind and senses to our surroundings. It was quiet except for a low pitched distant rumble. _Where are we?_

_Supply ship headed for Mars. We'll land in about an hour. Daerk will be there to meet us._

"Who's Daerk?" I asked aloud, confused.

Susan unwrapped herself from my embrace and stood to stretch. "He's one of us," she indicated her Ranger uniform, "who works with the Resistance. Moss got a message to him that we were coming."

I stayed still and tried to piece together the intervening hours since we escaped from the research dome.

"Quit worrying about it, ok?" Susan pulled me to my feet and kissed me. "Come on, let's get cleaned up and ready to debark."

I pushed the darkness away again and gladly complied.

<> 

The supply ship was a one man operation and it didn't take much effort to get off without him seeing us. Daerk was waiting for us and proved to be a middle aged man with the marks of heavy manual labor on his face and hands. He fit in perfectly with the working class of Mars Dome and the spaceport. Out of the pocket of his faded but clean coveralls he cautiously drew a green crystal badge to show us and whispered, "We live for the one,"

"We die for the one," Susan and I spoke in unison, flashing our own badges.

"In Valen's name." He put his badge back in his pocket. "I've been looking for Dr. Kirkish since the message came through from Ganymede," he said quietly. "The situation has changed slightly. She contacted someone in the Mars Resistance asking for help in getting off Mars. The Resistance contacted Babylon 5, and Babylon 5 has requested that we bring her to them."

Susan and I looked at one another, a thousand thoughts flying.

"I can get you off Mars," he added. "But you need to find her quickly."

"We'll do what we can." We took the tube out of the spaceport and into the commercial district. Immediately we noticed both the heavy concentration of people and the heightened security, despite the early hour. We slipped into one of the side corridors and quickly lost ourselves in the labyrinth of the market place. My mind was still shaky and the discordant mixture of sights and sounds almost defeated me entirely, but Susan held my hand and helped me strengthen my shields. It made the cacophony manageable, and I looked around with interest. This wasn't an area that I was familiar with from my time on Mars. It was certainly doing brisk business at the moment, though some of the rougher areas would give Down Below on Babylon 5 a run for its money.

At first we just wandered around trying to get a feel for the place. It wouldn't be any good trying to scan for thoughts of images that might lead us to Kirkish, there was too much mental noise. "We need a more direct approach," Susan said. "Do you remember any of your Resistance contacts from the telepath underground railroad?"

"Just one. He was still working with them last I heard, but that was a while ago," I said doubtfully.

We secured a public comm unit and waited for the signal to go through. But when we finally reached someone, it wasn't who I expected, and they claimed to not know anyone by that name. Before the communication could go any further, Susan shut the comm off and quickly wiped the local memory. "It looks like his cover's been blown; they'll probably send someone down here to check on who was trying to contact him." I agreed silently and matched pace with her as we moved towards a vantage point with a view of the comm terminal.

Less than ten minutes later, a security officer wearing a black Nightwatch armband showed up with a telepath in tow. Susan and I exchanged glances. _Since when is Psi Corps supplying security?_ I asked mentally.

 _Maybe since they have a high value target trying to escape,_ she replied. She touched my mind and I pushed my remaining headache aside. Together we extended our senses and searched the myriad mental voices that swirled around us. We picked our way delicately through the clamor looking for one particular telepathic voice. _At least he isn't a Psi Cop._

 _About a P10,_ I agreed. _But with excellent control, we won't get much from him like this._

They didn't find anything useful from the comm terminal and moved off to leave the market area. It didn't take much to see that the security guard didn't know anything and when he left in response to a chime from his link, we let him go. We followed the telepath at a safe distance as he moved into a more industrial area away from the noise of the market.

After an hour of seemingly pointless wandering, the telepath was met by another. This one also had good mental shields and we couldn't pick anything up without giving ourselves away. All we could tell was that they were very excited about something. They immediately set off in the direction of the outer wall of the Dome. We followed. As they approached the final ring of buildings, they headed for a complex that had one large building flanked by several small ones all enclosed by a fence. Once we got close enough, we could see a large IPX sign. This had to be important.

They converged on two other telepaths wearing different uniforms that were gathered at the entrance. _They're from a bloodhound unit._

 _And what are the chances that there's someone **else** from IPX running from Psi Corps?_ Susan asked rhetorically. We moved away from the telepaths in search of another way into the complex.

We circled around until we were as far from them as we could get and found a locked gate. Not bothering with it, we climbed the fence and dropped down into what looked like a machine shop. Susan picked way carefully through pieces and parts scattered around fabrication machinery to a doorway while I kept watch.

It was locked of course. Susan fiddled with it for a few minutes then gave up. "You're up teek."

I picked my own way over and gave her a mock glare then focused on it. Nothing happened. "Are you sure it's a hardware lock?"

"Pretty sure. It isn't programmable anyway."

There were shouts in the distance. "We don't have time for this," I said and held my hand out. She took my hand and we focused on the lock. Nothing happened at first, but soon it started glowing redder and redder until it blew off with a shower of sparks. Using our abilities with high rated telepaths around was dangerous, but we had to risk it.

Susan released me and shoved hard on the door to open it. "Come on."

We raced down a long corridor to a large central atrium area. "Which way?" Susan asked.

I held out my hand once again; we'd have to send our thoughts out seeking other minds like what we'd done in the mineshaft. I momentarily quailed at the thought, afraid suddenly of meeting something as frightening as the Shadow vessel. Who knew what else IPX had collected? I felt Susan's wordless reassurance and slipped into her mind, sending our thoughts wandering through the complex.

Someone's fear was easy to detect, as were the psi signals of the telepaths still near the entrance. We located the person quickly in a communications room just off the main area. We entered the room just as a woman jerked a data crystal out of its port. Her panic was palpable as she faced us eyes wide. "Relax," I said, keeping my voice quiet and hopefully reassuring. "Are you Dr. Kirkish?'

"Who wants to know?" Her voice was tense but steady.

"I'm Talia Winters and this is my partner Susan Ivanova," I replied. "We're here to get you to Babylon 5."

Her disbelief was obvious. "Who sent you?"

"You contacted a Resistance member named Littlecreek," I said.

Susan chimed in, "And she got in touch with the head of security on Babylon 5. He asked the Rangers," she indicated our uniforms, "to take you to safety."

We could sense the other telepaths getting closer; they must have made it through the main entrance finally. "They're getting closer," I said to Susan. "You'll have to get her out of here, I'll distract them."

"No," Susan said, predictable as the sunrise. "I won't let you do that alone."

I smiled and touched her mind. _I'll have a better chance against telepaths and you know it, so we're not going to have that argument again. We don't have the time._

Susan's mouth tightened but she didn't answer. She gestured Kirkish forward and took her arm. "Come on, doc; let's get you out of here." They left at a run; Susan did not look back, but touched my mind lightly as she disappeared out of sight. _Be careful._

 _You too._ I went out to the atrium. I made it scant seconds before the other telepaths.

They attacked me mentally on sight, slashing through me like knives. One of them was apparently a mind shredder, but Jason's gift held. They couldn't scan me and they couldn't hurt me. But they could hurt Kirkish and Susan, and I couldn't let that happen.

I sent out as strong a psi signal as I could to cover their escape. I allowed their combined energies to thunder through me, not wanting to block them, merely contain them. I was maintaining a shaky equilibrium against them, when a more powerful telepath arrived and joined in on their side. _Psi Cop._ The equilibrium started to unbalance and the confusion of their combined thoughts started to overwhelm me even though they couldn't hurt me directly.

Then a sudden darkness filled me. It was a memory of Shadow, a roiling storm darker than midnight with a malign will of its own and it poured out of me and ensnared them, even as it had me and Susan. The slashing stopped as they were blinded by a darkness that was more than a mere absence of light but an actively extinguishing force, and deafened by the Shadow's shattering anguish.

I don't know how long we spent locked in furious night.

Then Susan was there. She slipped into Unity with me in a brilliant burst of light and power that expelled the darkness from me in an expanding shockwave that blasted through the other telepaths. One by one they crumpled under the concussive force and blinked out of our sight. The Psi Cop lasted longest, but even he could not resist our fierce outpouring and succumbed. The power we were putting out could not be sustained with nothing left to push against and our Unity collapsed.

I was shivering when I came back to myself a few seconds later. The warmth of Susan's hands on my face and the heat of her mind drove the chill away, but we didn't have time for gratitude. "Come on, Daerk followed us and has taken Kirkish to the spaceport. We need to get out of here."

I held Susan's arm for stability as we ran back down the corridor towards the door we'd entered from. We heard shouts and a commotion from that direction and stopped short. Security had discovered the open door. We didn't perceive any telepathic signatures, but didn't want to fight our way through half a dozen guys. In silent agreement, we turned back and headed for the front entrance.

I carefully avoided looking at the unconscious bodies of the telepaths as we passed by. At least I hoped that they were merely unconscious, the alternative was too disquieting. Susan was the fighter not me, and I pushed aside the implications of what I had done. I couldn't afford to think about it at the moment.

We hit made it to the outer wall of the Dome without meeting anyone else, but we knew that security wouldn't be too far behind. We didn't slacken our pace and followed the arc of the Dome around until we reached the transport tube to the spaceport. There was a large throng of passengers milling around, waiting their turns to take the tube to the spaceport. Any thoughts we had of losing ourselves in the crowd were dashed by the sight of a score of security personnel threading their way through the crowd in obvious search of someone.

 _Us probably,_ Susan said.

 _Is there a way to the spaceport other than the tube?_ I asked. _There's too many for a mind cast, and we don't dare use telepathy anyway in case there are more telepaths around._

Susan just grunted. _Come on._

We headed back to the commercial area and headed to the other side of the dome. Almost an hour later we entered an office labeled 'shipping' and scouted until we found a garage-like bay full of trucks. They were every shape and size in ordered rows, alike one another only in having caterpillar treads to navigate the rocks and sands of Mars instead of wheels. No one seemed to be in the bay except us. Susan led that way to the front of the bay and started checking to find one that was fully charged. On the third try she found one and started it up. "Here, get in and take the controls, I'll open the bay doors."

I climbed over the tread and got into the cab. With a whine and a screech of metal on metal the bay door started to roll up right in front of me.

Suddenly someone appeared on the far side of the next row of trucks. "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" He started towards our truck but was intercepted by Susan. "What do you think you're doing?" he repeated.

Susan just gave him a bemused smile then slugged him. He dropped like a rock and she jumped up into the cab, shaking her hand. "Go," she commanded. "Head to that group of terminals over there," she pointed with her unhurt hand as we exited the bay.

I carefully coordinated the treads to turn us the direction we wanted and increased speed as much as I dared. "How's your hand?" I asked.

"Hurts. Not used to bar fights any more I guess." She chuckled and gave me a frank grin. "Did you see that guy drop? I think I kinda miss it."

"I should hope not." I shook my head and gave her a fond but exasperated smile. She chuckled again and leaned over to kiss me on the side of the head.

In only minutes we reached the first building at the terminal. I slowed as we approached it while Susan looked at it carefully. "Try the next one."

"Why, what did you see?"

"Nothing, just intuition." We passed two more before she said, "Pull in here." The building was empty; no cargo, no ship, and no people. "Good, let's ditch this thing and get going."

There was a tunnel leading back from the cluster of terminal buildings to the main concourse. It was crowded with crews of the various ships and dock workers headed both directions, and we were jostled seemingly every step of the way. Luckily there didn't seem to be much security. This was a busy part of the day it appeared. "The hour of scampering," I said under my breath.

Susan gave a good humored snort. "Looks like it all right."

The concourse was crowded too, passengers milling around in clusters around each gate. We edged our way across while trying to stay within larger groups of people for camouflage. There was a row of gates for five of the smaller Kestrel-type shuttles part way around the space dome and we headed for the second to last.

We entered, ducked under the starboard wing and headed aft. Daerk met us there. "What in the heck did you guys do? Every comm channel in Mars Dome is lit up about you."

I heard, but didn't hear Susan's reply as we climbed into his shuttle. We were relatively safe now, at least from our pursuers here on Mars and the adrenalin high I'd been running on wore off quickly. I was suddenly exhausted; my mind slipped into the emotional turmoil I'd been holding at bay and everything seemed to come through a thick haze in disjointed pieces. "Security reports... off planet... I don't know... no, right now..." Their voices flowed over me unimpeded and I was content to let Susan take care of everything.

My mind was focused on one thing only: the moment I had used the darkness as a weapon.

Susan didn't like to hurt people but she loved the exhilaration and challenge of combat, a joy which I did not share. And yet I had wielded that darkness as easily as she handled a fighting pike.

It was only a year ago that I and a dozen rogue telepaths had created such a perfect mindcast that we could fool the Psi Cop Bester, but this was quantitatively different. The changes that Jason had made had been slowly building over time, and they had accelerated in the last six months with Minbari training.

My mind stayed stuck on what I had done even as Susan strapped me into a jump seat and we took off. It stayed as we disembarked onto a large passenger starliner. I followed every instruction mechanically as Susan directed me and Kirkish to the stern-most cargo hold, for once grateful for her take-charge nature. I trusted Susan to guide me where she wanted me as we rearranged boxes of supplies and luggage into a barricade and private nooks, and I hardly noticed when she pushed me down onto a layer of blankets and left me alone.

I didn't have Susan's pragmatism after a fight, and being a telepath I was always more sensitive to the effects on others around me. I would rerun the 'what-ifs' in my head until I was shaking with fear and anxiety. But Susan was always there for me and they passed quickly. This fight however, I was determined to keep to myself, stunned by what I had done to the other telepaths.

Appalled might be a better word – was I now as monstrous as a Shadow vessel? What had it done to me? And most importantly, what might I inadvertently do to those I cared about?

Susan came to me once she had Kirkish settled. The space was narrow, but she curled herself around me on our bedroll. I blocked her when she tried to touch my mind. "You know, it would be easier for me to help if you'd tell me the problem," she whispered. But I was afraid and started shivering again. She held me tighter. "Come on, Tal, let me in."

"I can't," I choked out. "I might hurt you."

"No you won't. Now tell me," she urged.

I didn't speak for a long time, but she waited patiently holding me close and stroking my hair. The moment that The Darkness... I thought of it that way now, as if it was a magic spell from a fairy tale... the moment it burst from me replayed itself over and over in my mind. "Am I a monster now?" I finally whispered.

Susan was incredulous; I could feel it even though my blocks were up. "What if I was trapped in the Shadow for too long and it changed me?" I couldn't make myself say 'turned me into one of them' but that's what I meant and Susan sensed it.

"No, Talia. You aren't one of those things," she said softly.

"How can you say that after what I did to those telepaths?" I said, fighting tears. Almost inaudibly, "How can you trust me? How can you know?"

Susan tipped my chin up so that my face was even with hers, but I kept my eyes downcast. "The Shadow did that to _us_ , Tal."

"But how could I do that?" I asked, sniffling.

"You have this amazing power; you can look at something as simple as a glass of water and understand it down to the subatomic level... you can warm it, cool it, and even throw it across the room. You looked for hours into the dark heart of the Shadow and understood it the same way."

"But I can't create water," I objected.

"No, but that's physical matter. This was pure psi energy, which you _can_ generate." She shook me gently. "Look at me." When I raised my eyes finally, she said firmly, "Do you think the Shadow feels bad about what it did to us?" I didn't answer. "No it doesn't. And you can't be like it because _you do_."

She gave me another little shake. "You are the sweetest, gentlest, bravest, most beautiful person I have ever known." She kissed me lightly. "You are my heart and the other half of my soul, and I will never doubt you." I wanted to look away from the intensity of her eyes, but her hand still held my face gently. "It's all right, Talia. I'd be able feel that kind of darkness in you. It was just a memory you projected, nothing more."

My tears started then. She rolled onto her back and tucked me tightly to her side, my head on her shoulder. "Easy, _moya solnishka_." She rocked me back and forth and rubbed my back comfortingly. I felt her mental touch, wanting in. I hesitated, but she was insistent and I reluctantly opened my mind. Love flooded into me as warm and irrepressible as summer sunshine and banished all darkness. _See? Everything's going to be fine._

<> 

The following day was one of exhausting watchfulness. It turned to boredom in the afternoon however; we hardly spoke and didn't move around very much so as not to attract attention, at least until we could be sure that we were safe from discovery. All we could do was wait anyway. Kirkish spent the day catching up on sleep. By her own admission she'd hardly slept at all since leaving Ganymede. Nor was her sleep peaceful, Susan went to wake her several times from dreams. The images I got from her matched what Moss had described the miners having.

But no one disturbed our hideaway, and by that evening I had finally relaxed. Susan and I lay in our own little nook, not speaking, just each enjoying the comfort and company of the other. My head was on Susan's shoulder while she traced soothing patterns on my back. I kept only a light touch on her mind and let her warmth and heartbeat fill my senses. _Ya tebya lyublyu._

Susan hummed quietly in the back of her throat. _Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu._

Suddenly her touch changed from comforting to something else entirely. I moaned softly. _What are you doing?_

_Making love to my wife... it's been too long._

_Well, it wouldn't be so long if you wouldn't sleep in your ship all the time._ I said with humorous asperity. _Besides, we've got company, remember. She'll hear us._

Susan rolled me on my back and nudged my legs apart, continuing her attentions. _She's asleep, and she'll stay that way if you can manage to be quiet for once._ She gave me a wholly infuriating smirk.

_Oh, you are in so much trouble for that crack, Ivanova._

_Promises, promises,_ she said mockingly, adding her lips to my torment. _I'm not afraid of you, Winters._

 _Well, you should be,_ I threatened, but I was smiling now too.

 _Oh yeah, well what if I do this?_ Her touch between my legs became more insistent and I wriggled in frustration. _Or this?_ Clever fingers and knowing lips shifted again and I opened wider for her. _What do you say now, hmm?_

"Don't stop," was all I could gasp in a hoarse whisper.

She didn't.

It was a long night.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day Susan went out on a recon trip. I paced nervously in our small hideout, waiting for her to return. "It's been hours now," I fretted. "Where is she?" Kirkish made no answer. While she had mostly recovered from her shock, she still didn't say much. Finally I couldn't take it anymore; I knew how quickly my partner could get herself in trouble. "I'm going to go look for her."

Kirkish stood quickly. "I'll go with you." At my look she added, "I don't really want to be here alone." I nodded for her to come along.

We made it out to the promenade area without being seen. Most of the passengers and much of the crew were milling around socializing, and there was a buffet table at the far end. We stayed at the periphery and circled around to the long ramp up to the next level. Kirkish stopped suddenly and grabbed my arm. "Look, over there," she said, pointing. "That man talking to the Captain."

I saw a tall sandy haired man in a dark business suit. There was a badge on his lapel that I couldn't read.

"That's Enan Vacit," Kirkish whispered. "He's one of the other scientists from IPX. He was involved with the first Shadow vessel we found seven years ago, and rumor has it has he has high connections in Psi Corps. He was scheduled to arrive on Ganymede just after I left."

I was shocked that there had been another Shadow vessel and so long ago. But there was no time to ask questions. We headed to the periphery where there was a row of columns. "With a name like Vacit, I shouldn't wonder that he has connections to the Corps," I said. She looked at me questioningly. "Vacit was the name of the second director of Psi Corps who disappeared about sixty five years ago. Plus it makes sense that if the Psi Corps is interested in the Shadow vessels, they would have someone spying from the inside."

Vacit turned to look around the room and Kirkish ducked behind the nearest column. I did my own visual scan of the room and when my gaze returned, Vacit was right in front of me.

"Was there another woman standing here?" he asked

I gave him my blandest most disinterested expression. "No. Were you looking for someone in particular?"

"No, just someone I thought I recognized." His hazel eyes appraised me.

I returned his appraisal mildly. "Sorry, I can't help you."

He looked at me a second longer then said, "Thanks anyway." He turned and left.

As soon as he was lost in the crowd I ducked after Kirkish. She wasn't far. "We have to find Susan," I said.

Susan appeared at my elbow as if conjured. "Why? What's going on?"

I turned to her in relief. "Someone from IPX who was working on the Shadow vessel is here. He might have recognized Dr. Kirkish."

"Come on then," said Susan. She took my hand and we started up the ramp keeping Kirkish in front of us. She pointed us left at the top and we ran down a corridor to an old fashion stairwell, and then continued down three levels. Two more corridors and another stairwell and I was completely lost. Then we turned a final corner and were back at the hold where we had been hiding out.

"Okay, listen up," Susan said. "This liner was originally going direct to Epsilon Eridani. But they've apparently developed a problem in the water recycling unit and are going to make an unscheduled stop at Orion Station for parts and repair. So, we have a change of plans," she said. "If IPX is on board, we need to find some other route. I don't think it's at all a coincidence that they showed up."

"I don't either," Kirkish muttered.

"Plus," Susan continued, "Moving unpredictably gives us a chance to lose a tail if we've picked one up."

 _Oh I don't know,_ I said to her silently with a somewhat racy image from the night before, _I rather like your tail._

Susan gave me a pained look as she tried not to laugh. _I'll get you for that later._

Kirkish thankfully interrupted. "So how do we get off the starliner?"

"I have an idea," said Susan. "You guys pack up, I'll be right back." Then she was off again.

I sighed in exasperation and Kirkish cracked the first smile I'd seen from her. "Decisive, isn't she?"

"And annoying," I answered, gathering our stuff. "She used to be an Earthforce officer, and frequently still acts like one, expecting unquestioning obedience and not thinking to explain things."

Susan reappeared with a bundle in hand. "I heard that." She pecked me on the cheek. "Sorry, _lyubovnik_." She handed us each a coverall and billed hat like the crew wore. "We are going to slip out and join the crew in offloading. Put these on over your clothes. Try to stay in sight of one another."

I handed her kit over. "We've packed and cleaned up as much as possible."

Susan looked around quickly after donning her own coverall, obviously pleased that no trace of our habitation remained. "Good job." She turned to Kirkish and helped her pull the coverall on. "Okay?"

"Yes, that's fine," the doctor said. "I'm ready to get out of here."

I picked up on her thoughts as I tucked my hair into the hat that Susan handed me, hiding it. "Yes, it's not good to stay in place for too long."

Kirkish nodded agreement, hiding her own hair under her cap. Now that she was sure that she could trust us, her fear had been replaced by grim determination.

 _She'll be all right._ I said silently to Susan.

She sent wordless agreement. A tremor passed through the ship as the starliner dropped out of hyperspace. "Get ready," Susan said softly. "It won't be long now." There were incoming repair crew and outgoing supply crew everywhere, who would notice three more... Right?

We blended in almost perfectly when the time came. Kirkish and I ended up together on an anti-grav sled, the two of us navigating it through the narrow corridors in the cargo hold easily. We were nearing the outer cargo hatch when I realized that Susan had disappeared. I wasn't unduly frightened by that, I knew that she and I would be able to find one another, but it put my nerves a little more on edge.

We hit an intersection of corridors and were forced to halt. There were a dozen people from two different crew shifts that were blocking and yelling at one another over a spilled container of variously sized pipe fittings. I had no idea what to do, the longer we stayed the more likely someone would realize that we didn't belong.

Suddenly a familiar voice sounded from the cross corridor on the right and Susan was there. Even though she was unacquainted with this crew, she slipped into command mode and they obeyed meekly as if she'd been here all along. For once I was grateful for her instinctive drive to tell everyone around her what to do.

Keeping her voice low and forceful, in exactly one minute she had both incoming and outgoing crews sorted and organized. In one minute more she had a path cleared. Keeping with the fiction that we had a purpose here, she gestured to me and Kirkish forward. "Get going you two, the Captain's waiting." Kirkish and I jumped to obey as the rest of the crew had, and no one noticed that we were all impostors.

Susan touched my mind briefly as we passed her. _I looked up scheduled departures, head to the left when you get out the airlock; dock 93. I'll be right behind you._

Kirkish and I exited the starliner with no further complications. It was almost anticlimactic.

We dropped the anti-grav sled in a likely looking place and looked around. The berth that the starliner was docked in was one of over a hundred along the outside ring of the station. Wide suspended walkways sloped down from the outer ring like spokes on a wheel, dividing the ring into at least a dozen wedges that I could see, all leading to the cavernous inner hub which was a warren of shipping containers, cargo cranes and other heavy machinery.

"Which way do we go?" asked Kirkish.

"Susan said left to dock 93," I replied.

Kirkish looked at me oddly. "When did she tell you that?"

"When we saw her just now." At her continued look of confusion, I added, "In my mind. I'm a telepath." Fear spiked through her at that and I winced, knowing the cause.

"Psi Corps is involved with the Shadow project." She said warily, looking almost ready to bolt.

I laid a gentle hand on her arm. "Relax, I'm not with the Corps anymore. In their eyes I'm as much a fugitive as you are." I could tell that she was not comforted by that thought. "Come on, we need to keep moving."

The ring was crowded with both humans and aliens as we made our way around. We stuck to the inside of the ring, to be away from the various crews rotating on and off their ships.

The crowd had thinned by the time we reached the next walkway, and as we neared the next section, we were practically alone. I relaxed fractionally and started counting down to myself. "Four more to go... Three more to go..." My only worry was that Susan hadn't caught up to us yet.

We encountered a lone security guard at dock 91 and did our best to look as if we had legitimate business in the area. He said nothing as we passed, but I could feel his eyes following us. We were at the bulkhead to the next section when we heard him behind us. "Stop." His voice was not loud, but sharp. I took a calming breath to settle the pounding of my heart as we turned around, and I knew that Kirkish was just as afraid.

"No one's due through here right now. Who are you and where are you going?"

"We're on our way to dock 93," I said neutrally. "Is there a problem?" I tried to deepen my voice the way Susan does when she's being forceful.

He studied us silently for a minute and I tried to hide my growing nervousness. I didn't dare look at Kirkish to see how she was doing. Suddenly his hand flashed out and knocked my hat off, letting my hair fall down around my shoulders.

His face took on a new interest as he looked me up and down. Then he knocked Kirkish's hat off too and examined her as well. "You look familiar." He grabbed her chin with a grimy hand and forced her face up to his. I knew that I needed to take action now, but we also needed to not draw attention to ourselves, and I stayed rooted in place unsure of what to do.

He grabbed an arm of each of us and headed down the closest walkway to the hub, dragging us with him. I sent a silent call to Susan in hopes that she was close enough to hear me. He turned immediately at the bottom of the ramp and led us around a crane to a small dead end cul-de-sac made of shipping containers.

I should have reached into his mind to stop him, yet the memory of what I had done before stopped me. But now the realization of the true extent of our danger brought me back to myself. I made sure that I was in front of Kirkish, protecting her.

"Okay, now let's discuss what you two were up to." He ran a finger down my face and neck, across my shoulder and down my arm. "Hmm?" He leaned in close enough that I could smell his breath and I flinched involuntarily. He moved his arm as if to strike me, but thought is faster than muscle and I threw him out and into the side of the crane forcefully enough that he almost lost his feet.

Unfazed, he gave a nasty chuckle. "So you like it rough, eh?" He crouched slightly to charge back at me when I caught a flash in the corner of my eye. Abruptly he dropped to the ground unconscious with my avenging angel standing over him, twirling her pike in her hand.

Susan looked at me sternly. "I can't leave you alone for a minute, can I?"

"I was just holding him for you," I said cheerfully, making light of it. I knew that her overprotective streak tended to be off the scale when we got separated in a potentially dangerous place. "You handle dirty thugs so much better than I do."

"And it's much easier on my nerves that way." Susan walked over and slid an arm around me in a half hug as if to reassure herself that I was all right. "Are you all right, doc?" she asked Kirkish.

"I've been better," Kirkish said with the slightest of tremors in her voice. She looked around the corner or the crane. "Can we get out of here now?"

"Just a sec," said Susan. "Let me get this guy out of sight." She reached down and slid her hands under his shoulders, hoisting him up enough to drag him back into the cul-de-sac. I added a little mental push to help her with his heavy weight.

"Thanks for the assist," she whispered on returning. She twined our fingers together and we headed back out to the ring and dock 93.

<> 

We only had to make one detour to avoid more security before arriving at dock 93. The ship awaiting us was a salvage vessel. Through a clear portal we could see it floating serenely outside the ring, attached by a pressurized tunnel. It was an outlandish cobbled together mishmash of vessels from different races and styles, like something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production, if they had written comic space operas. I could recognize sections that were obviously Centauri and Drazi, plus a couple others I didn't know.

There didn't seem to be any crew about, and Kirkish and I explored around the dock entrance while Susan hacked the outer hatch open. It didn't take her long and we entered the ship. We followed her to the bridge and waited while she poked around on the controls. "Just confirming their flight plan," she said. "You guys go look around. I'm going to get into their comm system and see if I can't let someone know our route."

Kirkish and I methodically went through the ship. There were crew quarters and a mess hall, and another control room. It smelled like rust and iron, overlaid with hydraulic fluid and something else I couldn't identify. Idly I wondered how many crew worked this ship, and how many people we'd have to avoid.

"Petroleum extractives," Susan supplied helpfully, rejoining us. "And a crew of six."

"Too many to easily avoid in this small a space then," I said.

"Yes. Our accommodations won't be nearly as luxurious as the last."

I chuckled at 'luxurious' and was about to reply when we heard a loud crash and a commotion from the direction of the hatch we'd entered through.

Susan grabbed Kirkish's arm and pulled her into the salvage hold. I jumped in after and Susan hit the door control. We stood to one side of the door, Susan in front protectively, and listened to the talking and laughing of the crew as they passed by. Even after their voices faded we stood still and waited until the rumble of engines could be felt.

"Okay," said Susan, "It looks like we're spending the trip in here. They don't environmentally control this section so it's going to get cold."

Kirkish looked as if she wanted to start shivering already. "How cold?"

"Not as cold as space outside, but you'll think it is," replied Susan. She surveyed the hold. It was at least a hundred meters long and about half that wide and was filled with machinery of every shape and kind in a semi-organized chaos. "Spread out. We're looking for any kind of a transport or truck with a small cab or other small enclosed space. Barring that, check anything with a motor to see if it has any remaining fuel or residual charge." The ship jolted suddenly as it disengaged from the station and we each grabbed the nearest hunk of metal to hang on to. "Hurry, they aren't wasting any time taking off."

We scattered and started running through the huge space.

An exhaustive thirty minutes later, Kirkish shouted. Susan and I converged on her position from opposite directions. "Will this do?" She pointed at a medium sized bulk with a wide bar jutting horizontally out of the front that had jagged teeth all around its circumference. "I don't know what it is, but the cab looks intact."

"It's a trencher," said Susan absently as she examined its cabin. "Used in mining." The door popped open easily and she climbed inside. "It’s a little big," she called out, "but the temperature is already dropping, so it'll have to do."

At the mention of cold, I shivered.

"Come on." Susan gave Kirkish and I each a hand up into the cab. She dropped her pack and started rummaging through it. "Talia, get your emergency blankets out."

Ultrathin and strong, each 'blanket' was a large square of special insulating composite material and every Ranger carried several. You could roll yourself into one for protection from the elements, or build a shelter with several of them for more than one person.

"First thing we have to do is decrease the size of this space." She handed each of us a roll of adhesive and a blanket. "Attach them here and here," she gestured and we went to work dividing the cab in half and taping around the captain's chair. The floor was a bit uneven and had several sharp pieces of metal sticking up, so we didn't put one there, but Susan reached up over us and covered the ceiling. When we were finished, we had a small space a little more than a meter square with the ceiling low enough that we had stay crouched to stand. Susan took her Ranger cloak out and spread it on the floor and indicated I should do the same. She looked around with satisfaction. "Good thing this was meant for use in no atmosphere and most of it is already sealed. Good find, doc."

Thankfully our activity had warmed up the small space and we were crammed together quite comfortably on the floor, but I was still glad for our stolen coveralls. I could feel the cold from the bottom of the cab seeping in and I wished I was next to Susan. We had wedged Kirkish between us as she wasn't as warmly dressed as we were.

There was no need to keep quiet, even if we had all screamed the crew up front wouldn't have heard us, but there wasn't much to say anyway. Kirkish drifted off to sleep right away, still drained by her escape. "How long is this trip going to take?" I asked quietly.

"About twenty four hours," Susan replied.

I leaned my head back with a sigh and willed myself to sleep. When I awoke some time later, it was uncomfortably colder and I was shivering. Susan was rummaging through her pack and had pulled out one of the self-heating meal pouches we had brought, a luxury compared to our usual fare. "What are you going to do?" I asked in a whisper. The thought of warm food made my stomach growl.

"I'm going to break out the heating element," Susan whispered back. "Sorry, but we can't waste the heat on the food; you'll have to stick to ration bars."

I was disappointed, but pulled the few pouches I had out of my pack and handed them to her. She demonstrated how to pull the heater out and activate it. "All right, we'll take turns. You get some sleep," I said. I could tell she was exhausted.

"All right," she said reluctantly. "But don't let it get too cold in here before you activate another one."

"I'll be careful." Then a thought occurred to me. "Do we have enough for the whole trip?"

Without answering, Susan closed her eyes and kept her thoughts to herself.

<> 

So we alternated, and I slept when I could, pursued by nightmares of an icy abyss from which I could not escape. Just when I would be ready to scream, I would be filled with wonderful warmth and Susan would be with me. Not for the first time I thanked the Universe for her constant love and support.

Eighteen hours and six shift changes later, the last of the little heaters burnt out. I was shivering uncontrollably and Susan had a faint pallor to her skin, although she wasn't shivering as badly. Kirkish was conscious but lethargic. We had huddled as close as possible on either side of her, but her lips were blue and her breathing faint.

Susan checked Kirkish's pulse again then motioned me over to her side. "We need the more direct approach right now."

I understood immediately what she meant and was aghast. "Susan, the last time we tried to heat air, we almost incinerated a whole wing of the base." Water was pretty easy to warm, it accepted heat slowly and we could control it. Air however, went off like a flash bang.

"No, I'm talking about heating the metal of the cab." She patted the floor.

"That heats fairly quickly too," I said doubtfully. "Remember the lock we blew off. I don't know if we have the control."

"We may have waited too long already," Susan said quietly. "But we have to try."

We held each other tightly and slipped into Unity. The world around us sparkled and chimed; we could taste the oxygen in the air and feel passing neutrinos tickle our skin. We allowed all of the sensations to pass through us unfocused until we achieved balance. Then we hunted metal. We could smell its hardness and see its cold. There was much of it in the salvage hold, but we narrowed our awareness until it encompassed one piece, the floor of the cab. With my psi-energy and Susan's focus we concentrated...

Atoms are staunch individualists at times. They will respond to their environment reluctantly, forced to bow and to communicate and vibrate in response to stimuli around them. In large groups they are even more unwilling at first. But once the critical threshold is passed, they can take off explosively like an uncontrolled rocket. So they need to be persuaded lightly, gently coaxed and subtly nurtured. With painful concentration we conducted and coordinated, we shepherded and synchronized, directed and harmonized... and little by little our small little space warmed.

When we couldn't maintain that incredible level of focus any longer, we collapsed into ourselves once again. My head hurt and my body thrummed with tension, aching all the way down to my bones. But we were pleasantly warm, that's all that mattered. Susan kissed me lightly. "Sleep, love," she murmured.

I gladly complied.

<> 

I awoke several hours later, still aching from the cramped position. It was cooler again, but still bearable. "How much longer?" I asked.

"If they've kept their schedule, we should almost be there," Susan replied.

I nodded. I was thankful this trip was almost over.

Kirkish was awake too and looking much better. "Hey, were you guys glowing, or was I hallucinating?"

Susan and I looked at one another. _Glowing?_ I shrugged my shoulders.

"I kept having the weirdest dreams." Kirkish shook her head. "That must have been one of them, unless there really was a Thakallian cat in here."

"Well, hypothermia can have odd effects on the mind," Susan said diplomatically.

<>  
We got our little habitat packed away and ready to go when we felt the ship drop out of hyperspace. I listened intently towards the front of the ship for the sound of the ship docking, more than ready to get off. But I was surprised to hear a sharp clang from the stern, specifically from the back end of the hold we were in. I looked questioningly at Susan.

She was already in motion, jumping up and grabbing both our packs. "Move it!" She jumped down out of the cab and pulled Kirkish unceremoniously after her. "Hurry, Talia! We have to get out of here _now!_ "

At the sharpness of her tone I didn't stop to question, but jumped down and bolted after her as she raced to the access door to the crew area. Kirkish stumbled at being dragged so quickly, still stiff from our cramped quarters. I sped up and caught her other arm helping her keep her balance.

Susan didn't hesitate at the door; she slammed her fist into the lock and opened it heedless of who might be on the other side. The passageway was empty, but we could hear voices to our right. Susan pulled us left still at a run. We kept going until she found some kind of storage locker. She jerked it open and shoved us inside.

It was dark and quiet, with only the sound of our ragged breathing. Kirkish's chest was heaving and I was panting as well. Even Susan's breathing was elevated slightly as she pressed her ear against the door, listening intently. I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, but she squeezed my arm for silence.

She maintained her listening attitude as the ship shuddered violently for several minutes, then stopped. Finally, she relaxed and leaned back against the door with a sigh.

"What happened?" I whispered.

"They emptied their cargo," she said. "They opened the hold to space and let the vacuum suck everything out." She took a deep breath. "I was actually surprised that the hold was air pressurized to begin with, but I should have realized what would happen and found us a better place to hide," she said disgustedly.

I rubbed her arm comfortingly. _Don't beat yourself up, love._ Aloud I said, "We're safe now, so let's not dwell on it."

When the crew exited Susan left us briefly to head to the bridge. "Ok, the rendezvous is set," she announced when she returned.

"Who are we meeting?" Kirkish asked curiously.

Susan looked out the hatch carefully before leaving the ship. "We're meeting with the person who's going to take you the rest of the way to Babylon 5," she replied.

I raised my eyebrows at that; I thought that we were taking her the whole way. Susan shook her head minutely as if to say 'not now' and I held my peace for the moment.


	4. Chapter 4

Altair Station was crowded with the passengers and crews of various ships in every species imaginable. They mingled together in an almost lawless market place designed to separate them all from their money. We fit in without any trouble.

There was a little time before we had to meet our contact, so we strolled through. We passed an old female Drazi selling candies in little mesh bags. "Look, Susan," I pointed out. "You know all about Drazi, are those any good?"

Susan shrugged. "They're all right in an odd fruity sort of way; I've tasted worse. They're for the Kri Maru ritual."

"What's that?"

"It involves a kind of spanking." She turned a sudden wicked smile on me, her previous mood gone. "I'll show you later, if you want."

I handed the woman one of the small chits that were used for currency on the station. "I'll hold you to that." I grinned as I pocketed my sweets.

"Come on, the bay we're going to meet our contact in is this way." She took my hand and we started off, Kirkish trailing closely behind.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"A Ranger named Marcus Cole," she replied. "We haven't met him before, but Sech Turval recommended him."

We were nearly across the market when we saw a group of six men wearing black Nightwatch arm bands. "I didn't think those guys would be out this far," Kirkish said nervously.

"They shouldn't be," said Susan. "Let's get out of here before they see us."

We poked a nose through various doors trying to find a way through the ring around the market area. We found a mechanical room, a couple for equipment storage, and then an Antarean bottling operation that had a door out at the rear. We entered and headed to the back.

There were shelves and benches along the walls and a filling machine off to one side. The Antareans were using it to put pale pink liquid into clear bottles, and they mostly ignored us. Their overseer gave us the evil eye but he made no move to stop us. Susan had sent Kirkish ahead with a gentle nudge and I followed behind.

An Antarean with his hands full stepped back at the wrong time and tripped me. I threw a hand out instinctively to try and catch my balance, and for one moment everything moved in slow motion as I teetered. Then my hand connected with his bottles and they shattered as I hit the floor, covering me with pink liquid.

Susan looked back and then burst out laughing. Even Kirkish was trying not to giggle. I looked down at myself and found that I was covered in bright fuchsia pink. And by bright, I mean fluorescent neon burn-out-your-retinas pink. I looked back up, trapped between laughing, crying and a toddler-sized temper tantrum.

"It's the juice of the Antarean Jintra fruit. It turns that color when it oxidizes on contact with air." She extended a hand and helped me to my feet.

I looked down at myself horrified. The color even showed through the dark of my Ranger uniform, and my exposed skin was stained. I brought a hand up to brush back my hair, and discovered that it had been splattered too.

"It should come out," Susan said helpfully.

"Should?" I raised an eyebrow at her, trying to maintain some level of dignity and failing.

"Um, the color looks good on you?" She trying to make light of it, but I was having none of that.

"Let's just get out of here," I said with a sigh.

We made it to the small bay where we were meeting Cole in good time, but he was already there. I hung back where I couldn't be seen. _I can't meet him looking like this!_

Susan wisely kept her thoughts to herself, and led Kirkish away. I slipped around a small pleasure ship to where I could see from a distance and watched. Cole was tall with long dark hair, pale eyes, and a full beard and mustache. From this far away, he superficially resembled Susan, although I couldn't see enough detail at this distance to see for sure.

It didn't take long. Susan shook Kirkish's hand and helped her onto Cole's shuttle. She stood and watched as the shuttle lifted and took off, then turned back to where I was watching. She grinned at me as she reached me, saying, "Cole said, and I quote, 'tell your friend in pink to use baking soda and white wine' unquote."

I tried to be mad but the humor of the situation finally got me and I laughed. "Ok, I admit it's pretty funny." I gave her a teasing grin of my own. "You know what's even funnier? You've picked up a new admirer."

" _What?_ "

"Oh yes, I could feel it. Cole fell for you at first sight like a kiloton of bricks. His thoughts were so loud I could hear them clear across the bay."

"I'm gonna hurt him."

"Of course, knowing the feeling myself, I could hardly fault his choice."

"I'm gonna hurt you." Susan advanced on me, murder in her eye. She got right up in my face, forcing me to back a step. "You take all of that back."

"Nope. No can do," I said cheerfully. "The truth is he and I both have impeccable taste." She forced me back another step. "You should take it as a compliment. I know for a fact that more than one crewman on Babylon 5 found you enormously attractive." She stopped and just stared as I went on. "And that group of new Rangers that came through last week? One or two of them were absolutely _devastated_ to learn that you were taken." I buffed my nails on my uniform casually. "I think that all of your admirers should form a club, don't you?"

Susan spun on her heel and walked away from me silently. Oops, blasted right past the tease threshold. Still, she had never blocked me out completely, so I asked, "Where are you going?"

"To hot-wire one of these ships so that we can get off this station," she said shortly. Or rather, I thought she said 'ships', but she was muttering in Russian and using words she certainly hadn't taught me so I really couldn't tell.

"Great," I muttered. "That will go over very well with the local constabulary, I'm sure." But I followed willingly as I always did. As I always would. At least she was still speaking to me. Maybe after she'd banged away on an engine for a while she'd cool off.

"Susan, what does 'poshol' mean?" I asked trailing after her. She didn't answer but her shoulders relaxed slightly and I knew I was forgiven.

<> 

We rendezvoused with the _Solaris_ a few hours later. I'd finally managed to smooth her remaining ruffled feathers and sweet talked her into making sure no one saw me in my pink-electric-boogaloo state. True to her word, Susan made sure the coast was clear all the way back to our temporary quarters so that nobody saw me.

"I'm definitely taking a shower," I announced, heading across the small room.

"Sure you don't want some baking soda and white wine?" Susan asked innocently. I could feel the warmth of her close behind me.

Ah, humor fully restored; I could feel it chuckling below the surface of her words. I turned and stuck my tongue out at her saucily. "There's no wine aboard a Minbari ship, white or otherwise."

Susan leaned close enough that I could feel her breath, her lips not quite brushing mine. "Stick that tongue back out, why don't you," she whispered.

I complied, kissing her deeply. When we parted finally, I leaned my forehead against hers, practically panting. _Sorry, love. I really need to clean up. I'm sticky in places you don't really want to know about._

"That's all right," she said pulling away. "I need to get a status update on the bridge. I'll be back in a few." She gave me another quick peck on the lips and left.

I luxuriated in a long shower. If you can call a sonic luxurious. When I finally felt clean again and every last vestige of pink had been removed, I headed to the bridge, unsurprised that Susan hadn't returned to quarters yet. The bridge crew was minimal with Commander Talir in charge. I liked the short Minbari commander; he had a sly sense of humor similar to Susan's and was one of the fairest and even handed people I've ever known. He spoke in the lilting cadence of the obscure Minbari dialect that was native to him, even when speaking English. Sech Turval had once told me that it was their rarest dialect, with less than two hundred speakers.

He bowed to me in greeting. "Winters-shaal. I am instructed to tell you that Ivanova-shaal has left _Solaris_."

I was shocked, we'd just gotten back. "Did she say where she was going or why?"

"She chases Cole-shaal. Scout report says beware of threat-ships."

The human Ranger at the communications panel spoke up. "The images have come through from the scout, sir." He was one of the new ones, I noticed in passing.

"We shall view on screen, please." Talir turned to the screen expectantly.

While he didn't react to the images there, I blanched in shock. Amid the mixture of Narn fighters and raider ships was another. Talir didn't recognize the emblem, but I did. "That's a Black Omega. See if you can get a message to Ivanova, I have to follow her." I left the bridge and headed to the fighter hanger at a dead run cursing all the way. If one of those was around, it was the worst kind of trouble and definitely _not_ a coincidence.

<> 

I pushed my fighter's engines as far as the safety warnings would allow. I caught up to Cole's shuttle at an unnamed brown dwarf half a parsec from Babylon 5. Cole was skipping his ship through a ring of rocky debris with one raider ship in pursuit. The rest were a couple hundred klicks to port facing off against Susan who seemed to be holding her own for the moment, so I took a few minutes to disable the raider. "Cole, get out of here. We'll take care of the rest."

"Thanks, Winters. If you're ever on B5, I'll do as much for you." He shot out the debris field and set course for the station.

I was about to go help Susan when I caught the faint whiff of psi energy. I must be close to the Black Omega, though I couldn't see it. I slipped behind a rock that was big enough to cover the mass of my ship. I found an angle to watch Susan's battle which seemed to be going about as you'd expect considering it was Susan against, what? Two Narn fighters and half a dozen raider ships? Piece of cake for her.

I landed on the rock using thrusters to match speed and rotation and watched, trying to see the Black Omega. Every so often I would feel the brush of psi energy but I need to see it for myself, and didn't want to give my presence away.

My attention was drawn back to the battle by a much brighter flash. The remaining Narn fighter had collided with one of the raider ships and they both blew simultaneously, throwing Susan's small fighter in a spinning arc. She kept firing and took out the last of the raider ships.

"Lucky shot, even for her," I muttered, shaking my head.

Her fighter seemed to be damaged and I could see how much of a struggle it was for her to regain control of it. I just hoped that she wasn't injured as well. Once she had her craft righted and I was preparing to lift off my rock, I glimpsed movement on my starboard side.

It was the Black Omega.

I sent my mind outwards but hit the powerful mental wall of a Psi Cop. My ships sensors beeped as it powered up its weapons and I was jolted into action. No way would I let him hurt Susan.

I was close enough to feel the telepathic probe that he was directing at Susan. Virtually unprotected, she wasn't strong enough to have even minimal defenses against a Psi Cop. Her mental screams horrified me and hardened my resolve. I jammed my thrusters upwards and skyrocketed towards the Black Omega, Susan's pain still ricocheting through my mind. The Psi Cop didn't seem to have noticed me, and I propelled my fighter in between them and deflected his mind. Infuriated, he turned his attention from Susan and struck at me instead. I absorbed the mental violence for a long moment, unaffected by it and then without thinking twice I unleashed The Darkness.

I gathered a tar pit in my mind and poured it into him. He lashed out in futile anger as it slowly oozed around the outer margins of his mind and then quickly switched to fear as little by little it advanced and immobilized one piece of his mind after another. He was shrieking in earnest now, but I was impervious and made no attempt to speed the process up. Susan's own cries had subsided to hiccupping whimpers, but I only spared her the briefest thought as I concentrated on the bastard who'd hurt her. The slow suffocation continued and his struggles became weaker as he tired and lost more ability to project his mind. Finally his cries stopped as his mind was fully immobilized. I could tell that he wasn't unconscious; he was paralyzed in permanent darkness fully aware. I didn't care.

I turned away from him and focused on Susan. She was conscious but unresponsive. I longed to hold her physically, but these one-person fighters wouldn't accommodate that. So I wrapped her in a mental hug and sent loving warmth into her mind. With the gentlest of nudges, I sent her into a deep sleep.

Luckily she had powered down her engines. Maneuvering carefully, I extended the grappling claw of my ship and latched onto hers. My first impulse was to get her back to the _Solaris_ as quickly as possible, but I reconsidered and reluctantly turned towards Babylon 5. I pushed my encumbered ship after Cole's as fast as I dared. Almost within the station's sensor range, I caught up to him. "This is Winters, Ranger Cole, please respond."

"This is Cole," his voice crackled over the comm system. "Is there a problem?"

"There might be for you," I responded. "The last raider ship got off a message to Babylon 5 before Ivanova destroyed it. You might have an unfriendly welcoming committee when you get there."

"Thanks, I'll be prepared."

I was tempted to have him relay a message from me and Susan to Captain Sheridan or Delenn, but thought the better of it. Susan hadn't wanted to go to Babylon 5 for a reason, even if I didn't yet know what it was. "Good luck, Cole. Winters out." I turned and limped back to the _Solaris_.

<> 

Once I got Susan back to Delphi base, I wanted nothing more than to wrap myself around her mentally and physically, but duty called.

The collective elders of the Deneth Tribes were at Delphi to negotiate with the Rangers. Their position near the rim and on the flank of the Minbari Federation gave them strategic importance to the Shadows and their allies. The Minbari usually protected them but were elsewhere engaged these days. As was their custom we all sat on the floor on Minbari style cushions. I was on one side of the conference room and them on the other. The eldest Denovan sat regally in front with the rest of his party arrayed behind him, each colorfully decorated with their own tribal emblems. He was only loosely considered the chief, but they willingly deferred to him.

We were discussing their delivering supplies in return for our protection when one of the younger Rangers entered. She indicated that she needed to speak to me, so I asked the Deneth for a short break and stepped out of the conference room with her. "You must come," the young Minbari said. "We do not know what to make of Ivanova-shaal. She is wandering the passageways and won't speak to anyone."

I found her finally in the galley, industriously shifting cook wear from place to place. "Susan, what are you doing?" There was no answer, not even to acknowledge my presence. I stood in her way, she changed directions. I took a bowl from her hand, she picked up a spoon. Finally I did a surface scan of her mind.

It was as if she were another person entirely. The feel was completely different, her memories were gone, and most unsettling of all was that she didn't seem to sense that I had done it. Susan might not be a very strong telepath, but a lifetime of fear had made her very sensitive to being scanned.

Finally I physically stopped her and took both of her hands in mine. She was forced to finally look directly at me, an expression of vague surprise on her face. "Susan?" No response. I sighed. "Let's get you back to quarters." I led her unresisting and put her to bed and crawled in with her, then did what I had wanted to do since we'd gotten back and wrapped my mind and body around her. Duty would have to wait.

She fell immediately asleep while I kept watch for a while, then I fell asleep too. When I awoke she was gone, but the space beside me was still warm.

I found her in the living room gazing at the only decoration in our Spartan rooms, a Russian art deco piece that I had found for her. "Susan?" This time she responded to me, if only to turn around and look at me questioningly. I touched her mind ever so lightly to check on her state.

"Get out of my mind," she said immediately.

I smiled. Sense was starting to return.

<> 

"You did _what_ to the Psi Cop?" Susan looked at me incredulously, obviously horrified.

It was hours later. Thirasek, the Minbari telepath who was our trainer, had just left after determining that the Psi Cop had done no lasting damage and that her previous fugue state was over. I was bringing her up to date on what had happened.

"What would you have had me do?" I asked. "After he had wrung every useful bit of information out of your brain, he would have killed you." I returned her look with calm assurance. "I did what I had to do."

I had thought about it the long way back to Delphi while she had been unconscious. _I don't hurt people._ That had always been at the center of who I was; the scary telepath who had to always be vigilant lest I frighten people unduly. The innate compassion that came from being a telepath made me feel their pain in a literal sense.

This had been the biggest sticking point so far in my Ranger training. It was the crux of the Mora'dum, the application of terror. At first we are taught to recognize and overcome our fear. The final lesson was to _apply_ terror. I had lagged behind on this step, knowing that I would feel what my opponent felt. What I had done to the Psi Cop was more than mere terror and more than a simple mind cast of a memory. At need I had turned myself into a weapon and now I understood that I could do it without hesitation or regret, if the price was high enough. And Susan was that price.

I had looked into my heart and was at peace with the knowledge of what I could do and specifically what I had done. I would never cause needless pain, but in the face of war with the Shadows, this new awareness made me stronger.

With a wordless touch, I shared that with Susan directly. "It's no less than what you would do for me."

"I know," she took my hand. "But I'd rather you didn't have to do that sort of thing at all."

"You can't protect me from everything, Susan." I let go of her hand. "Are we partners or not?"

She was immediately apologetic. "Of course we are."

"Then you have to let me be your equal."

"We are," Susan replied, confused.

"But you still treat me like the fragile helpless thing that I no longer am." I relented a little and added gently, "You need to recognize that I'm a fighter now too."

Her face tensed with some emotion that she shielded from me and she turned away.

From behind her I put my hands on her shoulders and squeezed lightly. "Come on, Susan. Talk to me, tell me what's behind all this." She didn't respond. "Please?"

"I didn't want you to change, to have to make that choice," she finally whispered. "Everything is my fault. I'm sorry."

I could feel her guilt burst out like water from a dam and I was shocked. How had she hidden this from me so well? "Susan, it is _not_ your fault."

She made a dismissive movement with her shoulders. "Yes it is; you wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for me." She turned to face me and it came pouring out of her. "You wouldn't be a rogue blip on the run from the Corps. You wouldn't have to fight raiders or face down Psi Cops. You wouldn't be in the middle of a hopeless war against invincible legends. You'd be safe where you belong, on Babylon 5 or Mars or someplace. If any harm comes to you it will be on my hands."

I felt a sudden pain, a reflection of hers. All the times we'd been in each other's minds, shared our unique and glorious unity, and I'd missed it. She'd always seemed so invulnerable that I hadn't thought twice about how she saw things. And I knew, I _knew_ damn it, how she'd felt at first when I'd left Babylon 5 to follow her out here. I knew how she'd resisted my becoming a Ranger. And yet I hadn't seen how she carried that burden in addition to all the others she took upon herself.

I took her face in my hands. "You listen to me." She made a slight movement as if to resist, but I didn't allow her to pull away. "I'd be in danger eventually on Babylon 5 or Mars anyway, and I'd rather face it with you. I _chose_ this. Both the responsibility and the consequences are mine." I consciously softened my voice. "I won't let you carry that burden, love."

The Ivanova stubbornness resisted, I could feel it. Well I could be stubborn too, and there was more than one way to win a fight.

I traced her face with my hands. "You're so beautiful. You know, I fell in love with you the first instant I saw you. And I love you more each day. You protect me, support me, you're always there when I need you. I love that you care for life so much that it encompasses the whole galaxy; it's why you joined this fight." I kissed her lightly. "Underneath all that stiff military armor and efficiency lies a tender heart." I kissed her again, longer.

"It only beats for you," she whispered when we broke from the kiss.

"And that's what makes everything bearable," I whispered back, feeling her relent finally. I poured all my love into her and our private shimmering silver world started to whirl and contract around us. "Anything to be with you."


	5. Epilog

We received a data crystal ten days later. Susan started the vid and Dr. Kirkish's voice filled the room while we watched the battle with the Shadow vessel unfold.

_"A few weeks ago I was called to a new dig. They found another one of those things, this time on Ganymede. But there's a difference. Whoever's behind this back home doesn't want to give it back."_

The Shadow vessel broke free of the dome that had been erected over it, shattering the clearsteel like glass. Energy beams lanced out repeatedly as it began firing indiscriminately at the research installation below. It was distracted finally by a focused energy beam from the White Star. It pursued the White Star into the thick clouds of Jupiter's atmosphere.

_"In three days they're going to take it back to Earth, study its secrets and learn how to use it against other races and if necessary, our own people."_

Diving into Jupiter's gravity well, the energy weapons of the Shadow vessel ignited the atmospheric hydrogen. The White Star kept descending further and further until its own hull started to buckle from the pressure. At the very last second it spun around and reversed course. The Shadow vessel, being less maneuverable couldn't change direction fast enough and imploded from the extreme atmospheric pressures.

_"That's why I had to warn someone. You can't let them get ahold of one of these ships. They don't want it so that we can fight these things... They want us to become like them."_

Cruising safely in the upper reaches of Jupiter's atmosphere, the White Star was suddenly fired upon from another direction. It was the EAS _Agamemnon_. The White Star hesitated and was hit twice more. Just before it could be destroyed, it opened a jump point while still in the atmosphere and escaped in the resulting explosion.

_"That's it. That's all I have to say. They can kill me now, I don't care."_

"The _Agamemnon_ was Sheridan's old ship," Susan said quietly when the vid ended. "I'm glad he didn't fire on it."

We spent a moment reflecting on what had happened. Something in the back of my mind which had been bothering me finally came in focus. "Susan, what's the real reason we didn't take Dr. Kirkish to Babylon 5? And don't give me that 'Cole has the contacts' line, because we have some too. And I'd bet that you know the station and its security better than he does."

She was silent for a long stretch of time, her mind reserved. Not blocking me necessarily, but withdrawn. "I'm not ready to go back." Reluctantly she added, "I don't want to see John. Not yet."

I reached out and squeezed her hand comfortingly and she continued. "He was my friend and I've lied to him the entire time we've known each other."

"He's still your friend, Susan," I said softly. "And I'm sure he's forgiven you." She didn't answer her mind still quiet. "Susan, you have nothing to be ashamed of, none of what happed was your fault."

She looked at me finally. "My head knows that." She leaned over and kissed me. "And if you keep reminding me, my heart might get the message someday too."

I slid an arm around her and squeezed tightly. Nothing more needed to be said.

We sat that way for a long while, then I decided that the emotional intensity needed to be taken down a few notches. I pulled the little bag of candies I'd gotten from the old woman on Altair out of my pocket.

"Now, about this spanking ritual…"

Susan laughed; a bright sparkling sound full of joy. I tucked that sound into my heart to carry with me, knowing that the memory of it would banish all darkness.

=End=

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, suggestions, insults, or typos can be directed here: atomic.space.kitteh [at] gmail [dot] com
> 
> =^..^=


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